Nadine Shah: 'I am just one version of a Muslim woman, and people don’t get to see a lot of my kind'

Elisa Bray meets with the Mercury Prize nominee to discuss Brexit woes, wanting to have children, and why the excessive drinking had to stop

Shah's music covers everything from the rise of nationalism, refugees, divisive politicians and a pressing need for empathy (Dog Day Press)

You might think music award ceremonies are all glamour and excess. Not for Nadine Shah, whose third album, Holiday Destination, was the bookies’ favourite to win the Mercury Prize this year. “I was looking after my parents,” says the singer-songwriter, “and I was knackered so I only popped into Lily Allen’s party for half an hour, then went home and cleared the cat’s litter tray.”

Holiday Destination may have lost out to Wolf Alice’s Visions of a Life on the night, but it was the more potent album. Blending her sullen monotone with an intense post-punk redolent of PJ Harvey, it bristled with prescient themes – the rise of nationalism, refugees, divisive politicians and a pressing need for empathy. It certainly struck a chord for many. Since its release last year, she’s won AIM’s Album of the Year award, and has been invited to give countless talks on political matters.

When we meet, she’s as happy as ever to discuss its troubling subject matter, because, she says, they’re even more pertinent today: “They’ve got worse, if anything. These topics need addressing more than ever.”

One of those topics, of course, is Brexit. “It’s just really sad; the most vulnerable people in society have been lied to and manipulated. And as a musician, it’ll affect us with touring,” she says, acknowledging how much harder and more expensive it will become to play abroad. “Touring is our bread and butter, and it’s also my favourite part of the job. That’s a real worry.”

The musician was born to a Norwegian mother, and a Pakistani father (Dog Day Press)

Born to a Norwegian mother and a Pakistani father in Whitburn, South Tyneside, Shah was introduced to politics from a young age by her older brother, a documentary maker. She remembers going to London as young as 10 years old to join him on protests. Back in the family home she was aware of news beyond the UK, thanks to the Pakistani television her father watched.

Shah is conscious that being a Muslim woman in the music industry makes her a role model: “If it inspires any young Muslim women to pick up a guitar and play a song, that’s brilliant.” She recalls two young women wearing hijabs in the crowd at her Roundhouse show, one of whom mouthed “thank you” and the other who gave her two thumbs up. “Obviously I burst out crying,” she says. “That is a memory that’s going to stay with me forever. It makes me want to do more. I am just one version of a Muslim woman, and people don’t get to see a lot of my kind.”

She had an idyllic childhood – that is, until the events of 9/11, at which point everything changed overnight. Suddenly even she, with her Caucasian pale skin, became the victim of Islamophobia. It forced her to move to London, aged 16, to live with her brother.

“I loved being mixed race growing up,” she says. “I felt it was something that made me different, and I had this wealth of beautiful culture to draw on that friends didn’t know about and I could teach them. Things were awful after 9/11. So I did find coming to London as an escape.” She now lives in north London’s Tottenham, which she loves for its diversity.

Her debut album, Love Your Dum and Mad, tackled mental health – and was prompted by the suicides of two former boyfriends. Her fourth album, which is “pretty much all written”, is set to take an entirely different trajectory: female fertility and the pressures on thirty-something women to settle down and get married. It’s inspired by both her age (she turns 33 in January) and her suffering from endometriosis.

“I really want to have children,” she says, but such is her condition that she doesn’t know if she can get pregnant. “It’s a thing we just assume we can do, and it’s quite scary when you’re told you can’t – if you want to have children. It also brought up conversations with my friends of: do you feel pressured, as a woman, to have children? Do you feel stigmatised because you’re a woman who doesn’t want to have children?”

Everything inspires her songs, from current affairs (“normally some kind of injustice” – the last thing that made her angry was hearing how in certain parts of the UK, IVF services aren’t available on the NHS to women over age of 35) to conversations. Her mobile phone voice memos are filled with chats overheard on the bus or something an Uber driver told her. “It’s not always dark and gloomy and political. Sometimes I want to write about lovely characters I meet”, she says. “They probably won’t appear on this album, though, it’s going to be another misery.”

Not that the album really will be a “misery”; you imagine it will be imbued with the warmth and sharp wit that Shah displays throughout our interview. “A lot of it’s tongue-in-cheek, like that desperation in your mid-30s to settle down, and the most brilliant, beautiful, talented female friends of ours settling down with the biggest losers just because [the women] are a ticking time bomb. It’s a big topic to cover...” she says, switching to a comically deep, serious voice, “gender politics”.

These are issues we don’t often hear about in music, she says, and she feels “compelled to tell the stories” that exist among her friends.

Writing keeps Shah’s anxiety and depression at bay, and exercise helps, too, although a recently injured ankle has set her back. “If I’m not stimulated, that’s when my mind wanders and then unhealthy habits come into play,” she explains. “There are loads of things that I didn’t realise when I first started out: it’s such a caustic environment, the music industry.”

She points out gradual improvements, such as charities including Music Mind Matters and Calm, for which she’s an ambassador. “It’s improving a lot”, she says, pointing out the disappointment of the friends she takes backstage at festivals these days. “They’re all expecting some kind of Spinal Tap debauchery, and it’s just bands talking about catering, drinking herbal teas and Skyping their family, because people are starting to look after themselves a lot more.” Shah is one of them.

Because of the many recent casualties in the music industry, from Amy Winehouse to Mac Miller, there is heightened awareness around drug and alcohol abuse, and mental health. But Shah says it’s also down to “the myth of the tortured artist”.

“It’s the romanticising of that image, I think, that is quite destructive. I used to drink so much in the beginning and I also used to embrace my depression because I felt it was part of the job, almost, to suffer.” But, the excessive drinking had to stop: “I couldn’t keep up with it; I was having really severe panic attacks. It was really awful, and my depression got really bad.”

In the early days, though, alcohol was encouraged to help fuel her entertaining chat on stage; people would line up drinks for her. These days she and the band – “average age 50, my five dads” – will unwind with a bottle of wine, “but it’s never wild”.

In addition to the healthier lifestyle, in the lead up to Holiday Destination, Shah extricated herself from a destructive relationship that she has described as “being tortured every day”. Then she met her boyfriend (who works with songwriters), “the kindest most decent human being in the world”.

“I was very aware of what I wanted to make me happy.” She throws herself back on the sofa. “These interviews sometimes feel like therapy sessions!”

Nadine Shah tours the UK from the 2 to 5 December